- Domestic air travel in Canada, measured by passenger miles flown per-capita, is only about 40 per cent of the corresponding U.S. level.
This is especially surprising given that Canadian cities are generally further apart than are U.S. cities; if anything, we should be flying more than Americans, for whom driving is often a feasible alternative.

- Suggest that Canadians are flying less both for business as well as pleasure.

- (On the Senate's call for lower taxes and fees in Canada's aviation industry): Economic theory has convincingly shown that firms with a lot of pricing power do not respond much to lower costs by reducing final prices. The real driver of such price reductions is competition, and this is something that we have very little of.

"According to the World Economic Forum’s 2008 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report, Canada ranked 114 out of 130 nations surveyed for overall “price competitiveness” and 122nd for “ticket taxes and airport charges”, even while it scored first for “air transport infrastructure”. The same survey last year showed improvement in the overall standings (105 in price and first, again, for infrastructure), but the country dropped to 125th place in the metric of taxes and charges. “Canada is losing 5 million Canadian passengers to the U.S. annually,” she says. “And that equates to $1.3 billion in lost Canadian GDP and $200 million in lost tax revenue.”

Indeed, according to the World Economic Forum’s 2008 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report, Canada ranked 114 out of 130 nations surveyed for overall “price competitiveness” and 122nd for “ticket taxes and airport charges”, even while it scored first for “air transport infrastructure”. The same survey last year showed improvement in the overall standings (105 in price and first, again, for infrastructure), but the country dropped to 125th place in the metric of taxes and charges.

As a result, Macleans Magazine reported last year, “Over the years, a host of foreign airlines, from Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific and Israel’s El Al to Virgin America and Frontier Airlines, have either shelved expansion plans or stopped f lying to Canada altogether . . . airfares . . . are, on average, up to $120 more expensive than in the United States, according to some estimates.”

__________________.... Life's a gas when you do not own a car
1st travel rule: Never check luggage; 2nd travel rule: see #1

They are right. Look at a medium-sized airport like Halifax. It had 3,6 Mio passengers in 2012. This year, "Ground Lease Rent" to Transport Canada will be 6.1 Mio Dollars, another 1.5 Mio will be Realty Taxes.

Domestic air travel in Canada, measured by passenger miles flown per-capita, is only about 40 per cent of the corresponding U.S. level.

This is especially surprising given that Canadian cities are generally further apart than are U.S. cities; if anything, we should be flying more than Americans, for whom driving is often a feasible alternative.

2) Flyers on vacation tend to leave Canada rather than fly domestically. If my retired parents can fly from Vancouver to London for $300 less than it costs to fly from Vancouver to Charlottetown, guess where they're going to go?

3) Canadians are less nomadic than Americans. While Americans know people scattered all over the place and fly to visit them, Canadians' friends and family tend to be in their own cities.

4) Canadian business travellers fly North/South much more than east/west